Twenty years ago Nevin Sample walked into a small bank in Deep Cove, robbed a teller at gunpoint and fled into the forest of Cates Park. After a lengthy pursuit, he hid behind a stump at the edge of a small clearing. The police called to him. He raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Nevin had a magnetism, an understated complexity: there were those who loved him, resented him, found him gregarious. To Joe Denham, he was an old, close friend. Regeneration Machine is a 100-stanza, 9,000-word letter-in-verse to Nevin's ghost--a requiem, elegy, lament; a sort of flailing attempt to make sense of the nonsensically violent way that a non-violent, caring, intelligent young man chose to end his life.

Joe Denham is the author of Flux (Nightwood Editions, 2003), Windstorm (Nightwood Editions, 2009), and The Year of Broken Glass (Nightwood Editions, 2011). His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets (Nightwood Editions, 2004). He lives with his wife and two children in Halfmoon Bay, BC.